


a collection of moments

by CaissyMax



Series: History of the L'Manbergians [3]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Disassociation, Gen, Ghost Wilbur Soot, Niki | Nihachu and Ranboo are Siblings, Ranboo-centric (Video Blogging RPF), and also Ghostbur remembers more than he lets on, in that I wanted Ghostbur and Ranboo bonding more
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:48:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29370315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaissyMax/pseuds/CaissyMax
Summary: Ranboo and Ghostbur bonding because I wish we had gotten more of this interaction in the actual plot because I feel like they have a lot in common character wise.Sort of like extra scenes that work around the main plotline of season two.
Relationships: Niki | Nihachu & Ranboo, Ranboo & Wilbur Soot
Series: History of the L'Manbergians [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1972756
Comments: 6
Kudos: 97





	1. Late Night Introductions

Ranboo’s senses wake up one at a time as his brain slowly crawls its way back to awareness.

His feet are dragging against rough wood as he takes methodical, mechanical steps onward. His hand bumps against something soft with every swaying step. He smells rain before anything else and then the salt of the ocean. Both scents that set him on edge, send his blood pressure through the roof in an instant, because if he can feel wood grain under his feet, he isn’t wearing shoes, which means he certainly isn’t prepared to be out in a storm. And the ocean...well, that’s thankfully much more avoidable.

He wraps his arms around himself as the shocks bring him further back into consciousness. He blinks and rubs a hand over his eyes when it takes longer than he would like for his surroundings to come into focus.

He’s on the docks. Surrounded by barrels and half finished structures abandoned by whoever had initiated their construction. It’s eerie. Sure, he knows that the docks are rarely used anyway, that they are empty more often than not, but it’s so much worse when all of that is wrapped up in the dark of the night. He glances up and the moon hangs bright overhead, but not even its illumination can wash away the eeriness of the docks.

All of this is juxtaposed in an instant when he hears the gentle notes of a guitar. And, oh, he hadn’t heard anyone walking beside him but when he turns his head, there’s a man. He’s dressed in a faded yellow sweater and what might be jeans with a beanie covering most of his hair. He’s walking close enough beside Ranboo that their arms bump each other and that would explain the soft texture from before.

It takes longer than Ranboo will admit for him to recognize the chords and rhythm of the national anthem. It takes another awkward moment for him to realize that he has no idea who the man walking beside him is. BUt just as he considers asking, the man begins to sing. “I heard there was a special place...where men could go emancipate the brutality and tyranny...of their rulers.” He’s never heard the lyrics sung so soft. So...wistful. Every time he’s heard the national anthem up to this point has been as a rallying cry. Just one more act of rebellion and resistance for the stubborn people of L’Manberg. “Well, this place is real you needn’t fret, with Wilbur, Tommy, Tubbo, fuck Eret.” Ranboo blinks and stares at the side of the man’s face. That’s...strange. Hardly anyone sings what he assumes are the original four included in the anthem, most of the citizens include whatever names they want to, rhyming scheme or no. Whether their own or loved ones, it seems a tradition for the names to be more of a jumble of sound than to make any real sense. He’s only heard Niki stick to her guns in that regard and even she substitutes ‘and Eret’ where appropriate. “It’s a very big and…” The man grimaces. “...slightly blown up L’Manberg.” The man trails his way through the chorus and Ranboo’s ready to butt in with his questions when the man is finally finished. But then the man, who is getting stranger by the second, continues on. “For our freedom and our liberty...our nation we will...build on these?” His voice is more hesitant through these parts. “A victory for us and democracy...our darkest moment came and went, we built the walls...no. No, that’s not it.” he sighs. His hands fall away from the strings and he shifts the guitar onto his back.

“I-” he hesitates but he’s already caught the man’s attention so he pushes forward. “I didn’t know there was more to the anthem.” He’s pretty sure that he’s never heard more than the initial verse and the chorus. And if anyone was going to know about the national anthem in its entirety, he thinks it would be Niki or one of her friends, so he’s pretty confident.

“Oh, hello!” the man exclaims, a little too loud in the quiet night. Ranboo is careful not to meet his eyes as the man stares at him. Ranboo focuses on his bright smile instead and then, when he stares at it for long enough, notices the itch of familiarity at the quirk of his lips and the shape of his jaw, but he still can’t come up with any sort of name to pin on the man so clearly it isn’t that familiar. “You’re finally awake, that’s good!” He laughs and despite his staring, the man’s presence isn’t as uncomfortable as Ranboo might have expected. Really, it’s just one more bad first impression for the books. ‘Oh, how’d you meet?’ ‘Well, you see, I woke up from sleepwalking and he was sort of just there already, funny right?’. No, meeting people while sleepwalking easier than while he was awake would probably be considered sad. Or pathetic even. “I thought you might wander straight into the sea at the rate you were going.”

If Ranboo’s hands weren’t shaking before they sure were now and he holds himself even tighter but the man doesn’t even seem to notice that he’s hit a nerve. Ranboo knows that it’s very rude to do so but he turns on his heel without a word and begins to walk right back the way they had come from. He’d suffered through sailing on a boat to reunite with Niki but if he never had to be that close to water again it would be too soon.

For a second, he thinks that the man is going to obliviously carry right on, but the man reappears at his side without a sound.

And Ranboo’s really at a loss for words now as he rubs his hands up and down his arms, partially because of the slight chill in the air and partially because he’s not used to being this dressed down in front of other people.

Thankfully, he’s not forced to put anymore effort into this than he already has because the man, after a moment of silence, decides to pick up on the topic that Ranboo’s already started. “Oh, right.” He swings his guitar back to the front. “You asked about the song, yeah?” And he begins playing through the familiar chords, humming the melody that Ranboo has heard before from the people in L’Manberg.

“Y-yeah.” He winces at his own stutter but continues on regardless. “I’ve never heard anything beyond the first chorus before. I thought, or, well, I’ve been told that the...writer died before he could finish it.” He’s careful with his words here. He knows that Wilbur Soot is a touchy topic in these parts. Ranboo still isn’t quite sure what to think about L’Manberg’s first leader, it’s very first president. He’d heard good, bad, for, against, and everything in between. But the one thing that most of the citizens of L’Manberg agreed upon was that whatever anyone thought of Wilbur’s actions, there would be no L’Manberg without him.

Ranboo knows he’s said something wrong when the man's smile shrinks, becomes melancholic, and he says, “No, he never finished it.” His voice is soft, sort of echo-y, and the words might have been lost entirely if Ranboo wasn’t solely focused on the man. Ranboo isn’t even given the chance to try and fix his mistake before the man shakes the weird mood off and cheers right back up. “But Tubbo and Fundy found some old scores and fragments of lyrics when they were searching through-through…” He rubs a hand over the back of his neck and shrugs. “I don’t actually remember where they found them but they gave them to me and asked if I wanted to try my hand at some of it!” Oh, that’s good to know. The man already knows the others. The man shrugs. “So I’ve been experimenting with it but...no luck yet.”

“Oh, that’s cool, that’s cool.” he says, nodding a little too fast, pushing his hair back when it flops into his eyes. He doesn’t have his crown either and that’s almost more upsetting than the rest of the situation combined. “It sounded pretty good to me, but I don’t really know much about music so that probably doesn’t mean anything.” His mouth runs away with itself. “I’ve always wanted to learn how to play an instrument.” he admits and immediately wants to suck the words back in. This isn’t a pity party for him. This is a man who has kindly been keeping the weird new kid company while he mindlessly wandered his way across the whole of L’Manberg.

“Really?” The man, if possible, seems to brighten even further and, before Ranboo can do anything about it, the man is pulling his guitar strap over his head and passing it over to Ranboo. When Ranboo doesn’t immediately respond to it being pushed into his hands, the man even goes so far as to loop the strap over Ranboo’s head and shoulder for him. It was off to have someone so close to his own height for once. The man didn’t even have to stand on his toes or anything. Sure, there were still a few inches between them but it was closer than anyone had been in a long time. “Well, I can’t promise that I’m as good of a teacher as I was before but I can try.”

Ranboo’s shaking his head before the man even finishes his sentence, he holds the guitar carefully, afraid of having been trusted with something that looks so clearly well loved, and not sure what to do with his hands at all. “No, no, I can’t. I’ve got- My memory is...pretty bad. I-I probably wouldn’t remember whatever you tried to teach me by tomorrow anyway. I’d just be wasting your time-” He goes to pass the guitar back to its owner, but he’s stopped by two gentle hands grabbing his own and pulling them down and away from the strap.

The man’s face has gone completely soft, his smile calm, the hold he had on Ranboo’s hands turning into something grounding rather than restrictive. It all comes together to make Ranboo’s eyes sting and his throat constrict in an embarrassing way. “Well then, I can always try again tomorrow! I’ve taught my fair share of tough cases.”

But Ranboo still wasn’t convinced. “Oh.” He would definitely consider himself a tough case. Maybe even an impossible case. “But...but surely you’ve got other things you would rather be doing.” he says but doesn’t resist as the man moves his hands and arms to hold the instrument more properly. He catches the reflection of the moon in the water out of the corner of his eyes and winces. “Like sleeping maybe? God, what time is it even?”

The man laughs and shifts his hand into the crook of Ranboo’s elbow, pulling him along. Ranboo runs his fingers along the strings, the texture of them keeping him in the moment as the man nudges him into sitting down on the edge of one of Manifoldland’s planters before following suit. “Don’t worry about me! I don’t have a need for sleep anyway.” he says with a wink. Ranboo...isn’t quite sure whether he’s supposed to laugh or not? It-it sounds like a joke, or something that should be a joke, but the tone of it doesn’t quite hit the mark. “Now,” the man continues right on despite Ranboo contributing nothing to the conversation, “a proper teacher would likely show you all the pieces but we’re going to focus on the bits that are going to get you playing…”

The man turns out to be a decent teacher all things considered and Ranboo reaches a point where he can, in theory, play a few notes of the anthem, but his fingertips sting and he fumbles his way across the frets more often than not. And keeping the number and letters and positions straight in his head is an ordeal of its own. But the man is persistent as well as patient and doesn’t seem to mind repeating himself again and again but Ranboo’s still careful to not ask the same question too many times.

The man notices the instant that whatever was left of Ranboo’s energy begins flagging and keeping his eyes focused and open becomes its own challenge. He laughs quietly before gently relieving Ranboo of the guitar. “Seems like I’m not the one who should be worried about getting some sleep.” he chirps, fiddling with the guitar’s tuning as he coaxes Ranboo onto his feet, steadying him when he swayed a bit. “C’mon I’ll make sure you get where you’re going.”

“Is this a thing you do often?” he asks, too tired to even care about his own bluntness.

The man blinks, head tilting and the curly hair on his forehead shifting to partially cover one of his eyes. “What do you mean?” His steady, soft tone makes it very, very difficult for Ranboo to keep track of the words being said while his brain is trying so hard to drift back into the fog of sleep.

But he manages. “Keeping weird, sleepwalking strangers company, impromptu music lessons, just-just...this.” He waves a hand between them.

The man watches him for a moment, chewing on his lip and expression turned pensive, before he turns and begins leading the way back into L’Manberg proper. Ranboo follows, allows the quiet without complaint, worried that he’s crossed some sort of line with his question.

It’s as they step onto the first of the wooden bridges into the city that the man speaks. “No…” he murmurs with a sigh. “I don’t…’do this often’. It’s just…” He taps out a rhythm on the body of his guitar, a steady back and forth. “You looked lost and alone and it-it reminded me of someone. So, I wanted to help, if I could.”

“Oh.” Well, now Ranboo sort of felt bad. He scratches at the back of his neck, focusing on the sound of their footsteps across the wood instead of the guilt trying to bubble up in him. “Well, thanks then. I guess.” he murmurs, crossing his arms and holding onto his elbows, fingers worrying at the fabric of his shirt.

It’s a lackluster response when the man has offered so much himself, but if the man is bothered by it, he doesn’t show it, lips stretching back into a smile, a smaller one, sure, a bit fragile, but there. “You’re very welcome. Now, let’s-”

“Ranboo!”

Ranboo about jumps out of his skin when his own name sharply cuts through the quiet night, head snapping in the direction of the noise. And, there just in front of the first grouping of houses, looking parts worried, frustrated, and relieved, stands Niki.

She’s got a blanket wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl. Her hair is still in the braid she put it in the day before and she’s got sandals on instead of the more practical shoes Ranboo sees her in more often than not. It’s very clear that she’s jumped straight out of her bed and out of the house without much pause for the details. Knowing that he looks much the same, if not worse, realistically, has him shoving down laughter. The irony in both of them, arguably some of the most put together people appearance wise wandering about the town as dressed down as anyone will likely ever seen them is hard to ignore though.

Easier when he knows that he’s almost certainly the reason that Niki is out so late and in such a state to begin with. “Niki?” he calls out hesitantly, taking a few steps forward. “What-what are you doing?” he asks, wanting to bang his head against a wall even as the words leave his mouth because its just such a dumb question.

And Niki seems to agree, considering the way her jaw tightens and her shoulders lift towards her ears with renewed tension. She stalks forward to stand in front of him, one hand on her hip as the other still keeps the blanket in place, intimidating despite how small she is compared to him. “I should be asking you that question!” she snaps and Ranboo winces, shoulders rolling forward in an effort to make himself a little bit smaller. Niki takes a deep breath and seems to shake herself, softening back to a Niki that Ranboo is more familiar with. “Why didn’t you tell me you were still having problems with sleepwalking?” she asks and now she sounds on the verge of tears and Ranboo feels like the worst person in the world.

He shifts his weight from one foot to the other and shrugs. He doesn’t have a good answer. “I don’t know.” he sighs. “It just...It isn’t like it happens that often anymore so I didn’t think it was that big of a deal.”

And he isn’t even surprised at this point that he just keeps digging his grave deeper as Niki sputters out, “You could’ve gotten hurt, Ranboo!” She reaches forward, blanket falling to the ground, and grabs both of his arms, hands tight around his wrists. “We literally live above a giant crater! What if you had walked off?” Ranboo grimaces. He doesn’t even want to think about that possibility. Even if he managed to not crack his skull open on the rocks on the way down, the crater had begun flooding with the recent rainfall, so there was nothing but water waiting below. A stroke of luck, most might consider it as it made a fall less deadly, but for Ranboo it wouldn’t provide any sort of comfort.

“I-I…” He doesn’t have any excuses. Not really. He deflates, slouching forward into Niki’s space, resting his head on Niki’s shoulder. “I didn’t think. I’m sorry.”

Niki lets out a heavy breath of her own and releases his arms only to wrap her own around him and squeeze him like she’s worried he’ll wander off again. He’s more hesitant but he does return the hug carefully. “Just...no more secrets, okay?” she mumbles into his chest and he nods into her hair. “You were gone so long, I really thought that I’d lost you.”

And Ranboo remembers in a flash why, exactly, he was out so long besides the whole sleepwalking thing.

He pulls back out of the embrace, embarrassed and shifting to look back over his shoulder where the man has been quiet throughout their whole scene. Probably uncomfortable with the public family drama. “Oh man, I’m sorry, I-”

But there’s no one there.

Ranboo’s mouth opens and closes, a confused noise escaping him even as he could find no more words.

“Ranboo?” Niki sounds about as confused as he’s sure that he looks.

He hadn’t heard anything though. Hadn’t felt any vibrations or wood shifting from the man’s departure. Sure, he had been focused on other things, but he was normally more aware of his surroundings than that.

He pulled even further away from Niki before jogging back in the direction that they had come from looking for the man. “Ranboo!” Niki gasps and he’ll feel bad about already worrying her again when he figures out what is going on.

Because the man is completely gone. Vanished more than left. They certainly hadn’t been talking long enough for the man to get that far away unless he had booked it for whatever reason. But if that were the case, they would have heard him! “There-there was a man with me!” he finally sputters out, stopping at the edge of the path and digging his hands into his hair. He glances back at Niki behind him, the look on her face unreadable and only growing more so as he keeps talking. He just wants her to believe him. Surely, he hadn’t just imagined the whole thing? “He was showing me how-how to play guitar, that’s why I was gone for so long.”

He’s not sure what part of his sentence causes it but something in what he’s said causes Niki’s expression to darken, brows furrowing and lips turning down in a frown. It’s a look he’s not sure he’s ever seen from Niki before and he can be at least relieved knowing that the chances of it being directed at him is slim. When she pulls gently on his sleeve to guide him back to looking at her instead of continuing to search for the vanished figure it serves to relax him even further. She’s definitely not mad at him then and after a few deep breaths she seems to get whatever mood that’s come over her back under control. “Did he tell you his name?” she asks, casually. Overly so.

Ranboo shakes his head, a little embarrassed over the fact that he hadn’t even thought to ask. “No, I didn’t get the chance.”

“Can you tell me what he looked like then?” she persists.

The small details are already becoming foggy as time drags on, but for her, for how insistent she is on knowing, he does his best to remember. “Um...He-he was almost as tall as me? And he had dark hair, curly I think but most of it was under a hat he was wearing…” he murmurs, more to himself than anything as he talks out what he can recall. “He wore a sweater I think? Oh!” He snaps his fingers. “He said that he knew Tubbo and Fundy and he was trying to finish the national anthem.”

“It was him then.” Niki mutters and Ranboo’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Reassured, at least, that he had been interacting with a real person even if that person had somehow vanished on him.

He really doesn’t want to ask, but he wants to know what’s going on just as bad. “Niki, why are you acting so weird?”

Niki retreats into herself with the question, putting space between them and herself. Turning her eyes to stare down at her feet instead of at him, usually he’d appreciate the lack of attention but right now...it all makes him hyper aware of the fact that there aren’t really that many years separating the two of them. Niki’s taken on a lot of responsibility because she’s had and while she generally seems to take to it well, Ranboo’s sure that there are things she’s kept hidden from him. “Because...because the person, no, the-the-” She lets out a noise of frustration and her fingers dig into her elbows hard enough that Ranboo worries she’ll hurt herself. And then she laughs, wiping at her suddenly wet eyes with a hand. “You’ve not met a man, you’ve met the Ghost of L’Manberg.” Her tone is derisive and mocking across the strange title. “Who only bothers to show himself to people who won’t hold him fucking accountable for his action!” Her voice slowly gets louder until she’s shouting into the wind, shooting narrow eyed looks into the empty air around them. Ranboo’s glad that he’s not the one at the other end of that look.

Ranboo...is more confused now than ever. This whole night has had his head spinning but this just really takes the cake. He decides to focus on one thing at a time. The first of being, “Ghost of L’Manberg?” which draws Niki’s attention back to him.

“Wilbur Soot.” she clarifies, shaking her head. “Or whatever is left of him between exile and death.”

And it only takes two words, one name, for Ranboo to feel like a complete idiot. For the pieces to come together and the clues to align into one obvious conclusion that he only realizes when it is already laid out for him. It throws everything he’s heard about the late president up in the air because the man he had spent the last hour or so with certainly hadn’t been the ambitious, honorable man driven out of his mind with paranoia. There was one part of their conversation that stuck out to him. “...he said I reminded him of someone?”

Niki takes a deep, deep breath at that and lets it out very slowly.

But she doesn’t look surprised.

“You remind me of someone sometimes too.” she says and Ranboo has a bad feeling her and-and the ghost - he’s not sure what to call him - have the same person in mind. “Dedicated to the people you care about, loyal almost to a fault, too easy to trust, idealistic…” She loops her arm through his and gently begins leading him back home, finally, stooping to snag the blanket she’d dropped on their way past.

“But...but…” He doesn’t want to think too much about the comparison being made, about who Niki clearly sees in him, but he does wonder if his similarities to the friend she had lost haunted her like it would surely haunt him now. “But I wouldn’t-- Didn’t he try to destroy everything he’d ever worked for?” he stumbles out.

Niki laughs, small and still a little sad but a good sign. “I said similar, not exactly the same.” It doesn’t quite soothe his worries. “And, not that it excuses his actions or makes what he did right or-or brings back all of the things we lost with the original L’Manberg-” She stops herself, clearly working herself back up just thinking about the finale of the Manberg-Pogtopia War, shaking herself. “It doesn’t make it any better but...Wilbur wasn’t the same after he was exiled. I saw him a few times before the end and every time it was like I saw less and less of the Wilbur I had fought alongside during the revolution.” She tilts her head up to the sky and Ranboo carefully takes the lead up the stairs to the platform where their house resides. Ranboo can see the slightest shine to her cheeks but doesn’t mention it. “I always wonder if there was something I could have done. If maybe I had pushed a little harder or tried harder to get him to stick around instead of running off…” It’s during moments like these that Ranboo is hit with the reality of what Niki has been through. What all the veterans of the wars have been through. Basically every citizen of L’Manberg, maybe not on as personal of a level, but they all went through the same tragedies.

It chills him down to his bones. Niki’s letters had always made it seem so much grander, like fairytales more than living accounts. It scares him, thinking back on some of the things he has read, how much danger she had really been in.

“I mean,” he’s hesitant to speak on something he wasn’t even around for but continues on when Niki tilts her head toward him in acknowledgement, “you were-you were busy with other things, weren’t you?” He scrambles for the memory. He’s read the letters so many times, it’s just a matter of sorting out what he knows. “With-with King Eret? And, um, Fundy?”

“Helping to smuggle those at high risk over the border.” she offers with a nod. “Organizing Greater SMP aid to Manberg under Dream’s nose.” She huffs and pulls open the door to their home, herding him inside ahead of her as if still worried he was somehow gonna make a run for it. “Trying to keep Fundy from going off the deep end as well, though...that didn’t really work out either.”

Ranboo thought of the melancholic man who trailed after them on his tour around L’Manberg and the surrounding areas. Eating away his sorrows. Bags under his eyes that were so dark they looked like bruises. How they other L’Manbergians watched him with a combination of pity and grief and...regret.

Ranboo had heard his fair share about Fundy as well. Only son of Wilbur Soot (though there were whispers that Tommy Innit may as well count as the second) and Manberg loyalist turned coat alongside Quackity. How Fundy, Tommy, and Tubbo were the youngest of the revolutionaries but that they had seen it all. Raised alongside the nation they were fighting for. Fundy was the one who had burned Niki’s flag to the ground and Ranboo wasn’t quite sure what he thought about that yet. He wasn’t sure what he thought about Fundy at all yet.

He wants to make his own conclusions, but the rumors and gossip made him nervous to try.

“It sounds like you did everything you could manage.” he says even as she begins pushing him towards the stairs, urging him back up into his loft. “I can barely handle talking to new people and you helped support an entire revolution. Twice!”

“Thank you, Ranboo.” she says, voice fond as she pats his back where her hands continue to nudge him onwards. “I-” she hesitates. “I thought the same thing about myself, when Wilbur first started his fight against the SMP. I didn’t join him for a long time because I didn’t think I-I could do it.” Ranboo glances over his shoulder to look at her but all he can see is the top of her head as she stares down at the floor. “You’re always capable of more than you think.” she murmurs.

“Niki…?”

She shakes her head. “Stop worrying about me and go back to bed, Ranboo, I’ll make sure the doors down here are locked, just in case.”

He considers trying to say more but figures he’s pushed his luck enough for today in several different avenues. He climbs the stairs and pauses briefly at the top, reassured when he hears the sound of the lock snapping into place and watching as Niki begins to blow out the lanterns, waits until the bottom floor of the house is dark again before finishing his ascent.

He rubs his fingers hard into his temples as exhaustion hits him hard and he stumbles his way over to his desk, grabbing his notebook from where he’d left it on his desk that evening. He tosses himself onto the bed and curls up, back against the headboard and notebook propped up on his legs. He’s got so much new information in his head, he has to get it all down before it slips away from him.

He writes and he writes. Barely noticing as he slumps further and further down, vision slowly going fuzzy and eyes hardly even open enough to read what he’s putting on the page.

What he does notice just on the edge of his senses is the return of a strumming guitar. He feels his book slip out of his hands as his head hits a pillow and he-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed!
> 
> My headcanon is that Ranboo was sleepwalking even before the Voice was a thing because I wanted there to be a precedent for it I guess?
> 
> Also! I know that the anthem that Ghostbur sings isn’t completely right and that’s because I tweaked it to show that it’s not finished yet, I’m sure that that’s pretty clear but I figured I’d make sure to clarify it :)


	2. Unstoppable Force

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for disassociation in this chapter, though Ranboo doesn't realize that that's what he's experiencing so it's just the general symptoms. Probably just a general warning for Ranboo's whole deal in general and if there's anything specific I should be tagging please tell me because I'm not very familiar with it :]

Ranboo wouldn’t say the regret is immediate. In fact, he’s running high on adrenaline and buoyed by Tommy’s own infectious energy as they make their way back down the Prime Path. He’s giggling right alongside Tommy as they duck behind the brick wall across from where Puffy and Niki are still working and dodge the attention of the other people out and about.

It’s only after he’s left the borrowed clothes back where they’d come from and Tommy had waved him off with a grin, attention clearly moving onto whatever mischief he was looking to cause next, that the regret slowly began creeping in.

He takes a few deep, deliberate breaths as he maneuvers himself through the people on the path, doing his best to act normal but hyper aware of how many people are around him. How bad he is at lying and playing it cool.

Why had he let Tommy talk him into vandalizing someone’s home?

No, no, not just ‘someone’ but the king. Ruler of the Greater SMP. Of which L’Manberg currently only has a hesitant truce with.

Ranboo rubs his hands over his face and groans. What did he just do?

He drops his hands back to his side fast when he swears he catches the scent of smoke, tinged with sulfur. He wrings his hands together, rubs at his palms, the pads of his fingers, ends up picking at the skin around his fingernails when his anxiety begins burrowing even deeper.

Oh god, he hasn’t even considered what Niki’ll do if she finds out.

He thinks he might be more scared of her disappointment than anything Dream could do to him. But she had wanted him to work on making friends instead of spending so much time hanging around her. Does this count as a bonding experience? Does making friends with Tommy, he thinks, outweigh the potential crime they’ve committed?

He nearly falls on his face when he trips on an uneven plank in the path. He hopes the pain of it pulls him back from the thoughts spinning him in circles, but...he barely feels it at all. Someone lays a hand on his shoulder and he glances towards them. No one he recognizes. “Are you okay?” swims through his head and he nods. He might mumble something back but he’s not sure what.

They let him go and he continues down the path.

Him and Tommy hadn’t done anything that bad though, had they? Tommy had taken some things but Ranboo knew that he had only shuffled George’s items between chests. Annoying, sure, but nothing irreparable.

Well, he chews on his lips and tastes iron but doesn’t think anything of it, then there was the whole fire...thing. That was a thing they had done. But! He barely notices the stairs he’s approaching and numbly begins climbing them. He mumbles what he hopes is an apology when he bumps shoulders with someone but doesn’t stop. He needs to keep moving. But, him and Tommy had confined the fire to netherrack, more intimidating than damaging. Sure, there might be some smoke staining but that wasn’t-wasn’t too bad.

Right?

He shudders. The more he thinks about it, the easier it is for him to just imagine how this all goes wrong. He-he already knows what it’s like to have Dream chase him down. It makes his heart race just thinking about it. Or was it already beating that hard? He clenches his hands into the fabric of his jacket and sucks in a few deep breaths. Just-just the sense memory of tree branches pulling at his suit, his hair, eyes watering, body already sore from not being fast enough to escape. He couldn’t tell you what Dream said then or what he was thinking or even really where he had ended up, but the emotions that stirred within him were unsettling enough that he knew he didn’t want to experience it again.

Then why did he go along with Tommy? Why would he even risk it? He hadn’t just been putting himself in danger by doing so. Everyone he associated with and everyone he cared about could be in danger as well. He’d heard about how far Dream and those of the SMP could go when trying to make a point and he wasn’t ready to face their wrath.

But, oh boy, he’d really asked for it, hadn’t he?

He closes his eyes, pressing his hands against the side of his head though he can hardly feel the pressure of them at all, he just wants his head to stop spinning.

His eyes jump back open when he feels, faintly through his screaming thoughts and suit jacket, someone tuck a hand into his elbow, gently pulling one of his arms down away from his head. He’s confused when he sees a few strands of white and black hair tangled in his fingers. He glances over to the person touching him, he hates how he feels like he’s moving through jello, and he notices faded yellow before anything else. He drags his eyes a little further up and finds that where some part of him expected a soft smile, there’s a thin, concerned frown.

“Ranboo?” The ghost’s voice is even quieter now than when they had first met. His attention shifts entirely from the path he’s on and moving one foot in front of the other to staring at the ghost’s face. He’s still not sure what to think about the fact that this is the Wilbur Soot he’s facing. “Ranboo? Can you hear me?” Ranboo blinks and jerks his chin down, grimacing at his best attempt at a response. He feels stuck and he’s not sure why but it’s starting to drive him mad. The ghost blows out a breath and pulls at Ranboo’s arm insistently until Ranboo’s feet follow of their own accord. “Okay.” Ranboo stumbles as he is led off the path. “Okay, c’mon now, this way then.”

They go from the relatively open space of the prime path to an enclosed area, walls pressing in on either side of him. He curls in on himself as if making himself smaller will give him more space, will make his heart stop trying to beat its way out of his rib cage.

Why is he just letting someone lead him to who knows where? A ghost no less! And wasn’t that it’s own sort of impossibility. Right up there with why the ghost of Wilbur Soot cared enough to keep track of him anyways. Should he be more worried about this? It feels as if he isn’t worried enough about what’s happening.

He stares blankly down at his hands, black and white wringing together, nails picking at the skin around his fingers, only stopped by grey hand wiggling its way between his own two and pulling his left hand away from his right. The ghost’s hand is translucent enough to be made lighter when layered over his own. It’s an interesting effect and Ranboo stares at it, linking their fingers together and twisting and turning them to get a better look at it.

“I think I did something bad.” someone murmurs and Ranboo wants to commiserate with them because there seems to be a lot of people doing things they regret today. That is, until he realizes, oh, he said that.

The hand in his tightens momentarily, just enough to send Ranboo’s heart beating even faster, through the fog in his head he can feel a hitch in his breath. “Don’t say anything else.” the ghost says and Ranboo nods, the almost shocking cold of the ghost’s hand working to slowly pull him back into the present. The ghost squeezes his hand again and then continues to do so intermittently as, Ranboo realizes, he’s led into L’Manberg territory from the hill where Fundy’s house is rather than the normal path. “You can never be sure no one’s listening.” The words send a shiver down Ranboo’s spine, though he’s not sure why.

“Where-?” He swallows thickly and clears his throat, rubbing at his scalp with his free hand when it starts stinging. “Where are we going?” He hasn’t been up to this section of L’Manberg since Niki and Tubbo had toured him around. No reason to when he’s been spending most of his days trailing Niki or Tubbo.

Up this close, the crane looks massive, towering over even the other houses that surround it.

“Somewhere you can rest a while without worrying.” the ghost answers, voice now beginning to lean back towards chipper as he pushes open the door that leads inside the crane and pulls Ranboo inside with him. He still hasn’t let go of Ranboo’s hand, something that is both embarrassing and relieving. It makes Ranboo feel like a little kid who couldn’t handle himself, who needed such a childish form of reassurance after having a meltdown. But he’s too tired now to make anymore of a fuss. “You seem like you could use some place quiet to get your head on straight.”

Ranboo can wholeheartedly agree with that. If he doesn’t have to interact with anyone else the rest of the day, he’ll be happy. “I-I didn’t even know that there was anything in here.” he admits, blinking heavily as he takes in the small room.

It looks like it was meant to be a storage room more than anything. Barrels and chests lining the walls, more than a few cobwebs scattered about despite the fact that the structure itself wasn’t even that old. As far as he knew the only structures in L’Manberg older than a few months now was the White House Tubbo was apparently refusing to settle down in and the layered watchtower, a project supposedly overlooked by Eret.

The ghost lets go of him as he works to slip between a few precarious stacks of boxes, a narrow passage that Ranboo wouldn’t have thought anyone would be able to fit through. But the ghost vanishes into and Ranboo squeezes his now free hand with his other, already missing the contact even chilly and barely there as it had been. Ranboo’s not sure what to do now.

Is he supposed to follow? Or has the ghost decided that Ranboo’s regained enough of himself that he doesn’t need help anymore?

Ranboo thinks that he’s always sort of in a state of needing help, but that’s neither here nor there.

But then, as he shifts his weight from foot to foot and glances back towards the door, he hears, “Psst!” He startles and then looks at the narrow space that the ghost had squeezed through, crouching down to get a better look through it. He flinches and drops his gaze when he sees entirely white eyes before anything else, focusing on the vaguely see through nose and smile instead. “C’mon now, you may be taller than me but you’re skinny enough you should still be able to fit.”

He eyes the space with trepidation and isn’t sure that he would agree with that assessment. “I really don’t want to get stuck.” he agonizes though he wiggles a shoulder into the space just to give it a feel. He doesn’t immediately get wedged which is better than he expected but he’s still not sure.

“You won’t.” The ghost’s voice is soft and Ranboo takes a deep breath and shimmies further in. “And I’ll be right here, so it’s not like you’ll be alone if you do.” Which, not the most confidence boosting, but-but Ranboo can’t just stand here waffling forever.

He sucks in a breath and holds it as he shuffles his way through. The back of his jacket gets snagged on one of the boxes and he nearly falls back into a panic, breath rushing shallowly in and out through his nose.

A hand digs into his sleeve and tugs at him, urging him onward. His hands are shaking but he squirms until he gets his jacket loose again and finally shuffles until he tumbles out the other side.

“There you go!” the ghost cheers, steadying Ranboo to keep him from falling flat on his face. Ranboo takes a deep breath and lets it out shakily.

The ghost pats him and then moves right along and Ranboo looks around at where he’s ended up.

It’s really just more of the same, chests and boxes and barrels, but...there’s more of a sense of order, less dust, a few of the chests open and some items scattered about like someone was in the process of using them or sorting through them. Definitely a more personal touch to the space than the front half of the building.

He keeps half of his attention on the ghost, puttering around the small space, but the rest gets drawn towards a crossbow laid on top of a chest, loaded with a strangely shimmering bolt that Ranboo’s never seen before. He carefully picks it up, finger far from the trigger, examining the build of it, scratching a nail across the arrowhead but unable to tell if it’s made of real gold or just colored that way, before twisting it around to see if it’s been given a name. It’s rare to find anyone who’s put the effort into enchanting something - especially with mending, he notes as he runs his fingers over the familiar enchanted script carved into the wood - not to give it some kind of identifying name.

He comes up empty though, brows furrowing. There’s nothing else carved into the wood other than the enchantments.

“I haven’t finished with it yet.” The ghost’s voice comes from right behind his shoulder and Ranboo jolts, the crossbow slipping from his fingers and dropping back onto the chest with enough force to set off the trigger and he winces as the bolt slams into the nearest barrel. He should stop touching things. He should stop messing with things. He’s already messed up so much today and now he’s messing up things that aren’t his-

He blinks as the barrel the bolt has sunk into begins to glow with a faint light and the ghost lets out an excited noise. “Ah, the arrow works! I wasn’t sure they would.” he says, nudging an elbow into Ranboo’s side before walking forward and yanking the bolt back out of the barrel. He sets the bolt down beside the dropped crossbow and tugs on Ranboo again.

Ranboo lets himself be pulled along again. “Why is all this stuff hidden back here?”

The ghost laughs and releases him when they reach a trapdoor hidden between a barrel and another stack of boxes. The door is already lifted up and leaning against the wall so he assumes that that was what the ghost was occupied with before. “Force of habit?” he says with a shrug, smile crooked as he drops down and swings his legs into the opening. “You haven’t been here long enough to know better yet, but I’d make a bet that everyone in L’Manberg has their own little hidey holes.” 

Ranboo thinks about walking through Tommy’s house just that morning with its twisting and winding corridors, its doors that sometimes looked to lead nowhere. How he had had to uncover and flick levers to open the entrance down to the bunker where he’d explained his plan for the day. And Ranboo is certain even now that he’s not even seen half of what Tommy’s house might hold. To think that that might just be...how people in L’Manberg are, with secrets on top of secrets. Makes him wonder what Niki could be hiding. If she’s the same as these people.

Ranboo watches the ghost slip down the ladder and wonders, as well, if he’ll end up like them the longer he stays among them. He’s already got enough paranoia and anxiety on his own, he doesn’t need to add L’Manberg’s own flavor of it.

He shakes those thoughts from his head, clenching and unclenching his hands as he considers the ladder. His hands are still a little shaky but he thinks he has enough feeling in them to safely follow.

So, he does.

He takes in the transition from dark wood floor to bright white walls and manages to only stumble a little over his own two feet as he hits the floor. A hand on his bicep steadies him and he murmurs a, “Thanks,” as he turns towards the ghost. He doesn’t make it the full 180 however as his eye catches on what may as well be a small river not even a foot away from where he’s stood.

He jumps back on instinct more than anything and his back hits the wall as he puts as much space between himself and the lazily moving water. Maybe a little dramatic but he’s not got his armor or anything because of-of L’Manberg’s dumb rules and-and if any of that soaks into his clothes, he’s in for a bad time until he changes. He’s been respectful up till now about L’Manberg’s armor-off policy but he’s suddenly very aware of how vulnerable it makes him.

The ghost squeezes into the space between Ranboo and the running water and it makes Ranboo feel a little claustrophobic but it’s one more barrier between him and the water so he can’t really complain.

He shifts his gaze between the man’s cheekbone and over his shoulder and, probably nonsensically, asks, “Why?”

He notices the ghost’s jaw twitch before he says, “According to my books, these tunnels were originally just escape routes courtesy of Tommy, our little mole.” His voice is fond at the mention of Tommy even if the words don’t quite reflect it. Ranboo tries not to focus too much on Tommy at all. He’s got enough going on without going back down that rabbit hole. The ghost shuffles a bit to the side and Ranboo moves with him. “After the revolution,” he sounds almost like he’s reciting a passage from a history book, “they were converted to canals to provide the slowly growing L’Manberg with its water! Apparently the only people who know about them are the founders and the handful of people who take care of their upkeep. And now you!”

Ranboo’s brows furrow. “Why are they so secret?” he asks as the ghost continues to shift and move and Ranboo works to keep the ghost between him and the water. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices a shift in texture in the wall and leans out enough to get a look at it. An iron door blends nearly perfectly into the white walls.

“Oh! That’s because all of the canals are connected to each other and come from the same source, so if anyone were to sabotage them they would ruin the entirety of L’Manberg’s water supply in one fell swoop!” A chill goes down Ranboo’s spine at just how peppy the ghost’s voice is while he announces that, frankly, horrifying reality. Well, that’s something that Ranboo’s going to end up thinking about every time he uses any of the utilities in L’Manberg.

“Oh, um…” But he doesn’t have any idea what to say to that as the ghost pushes the button beside the iron door to open it. He holds it open and motion Ranboo in ahead of him, so Ranboo enters.

Now, Ranboo hadn’t been sure what to expect when the ghost had brought him down here, but it wasn’t walking into a cramped but homey little room. Blankets and pillows make up sporadic nests across the floor, there’s brewing stands bubbling away over in the corner with bookshelves on the wall above them, and there are quite a few books scattered about, some left open and clearly abandoned. There’s another door that he can see, as well as a few nooks and crannies that he can’t quite get a good look at, and the walls are entirely stone. It makes the small space a little chilly but Ranboo’s never been much bothered by the cold anyway.

“Welcome to my home!” the ghost exclaims, slipping past Ranboo and into the room and throwing his arms out wide. He’s in even higher spirits if that’s possible and Ranboo doesn’t know how anyone can smile that much, doesn’t it hurt?

He glances at the ghost and sees the brewing stands through the yellow of his sweater and realizes that, well, no, it probably doesn’t hurt.

“You really live down here?” he murmurs without really thinking about it. He picks his way across the room towards the brewing stands, his curiosity fighting its way back up to the surface. It was just one more of the many, many strange things he’d had to grow accustomed to in L’Manberg, the fact that potions existed at all. He’d heard about how L’Manberg had been built on the back of potion knowledge, how Wilbur Soot had been the one to defy the restrictions the SMP had on them, how those who knew more than Dream might’ve wanted them to had flocked to Wilbur’s side for the freedom he offered. And with them came those who were beyond the norm. He’d never seen people casually talk about brewing before, selling them in the markets or trading them between each other.

When Tommy had so easily given him the invis pot earlier that day and then downed the other as if it wasn’t a bother at all, Ranboo had barely been able to bring himself to do the same. He had been so tempted to hoard it away.

The potion’s that the ghost is brewing are the same color as the ones from earlier. Ranboo gets sort of lost in the shimmering, how the particles shift and flow in the bottle.

Surely, the invis pots that him and Tommy took would mean that no one would be the wiser to the perpetrators of the griefing of King George’s house. But-but...he reaches out and brushes his fingers across one of the bottles, merely blinking when a hand wraps around his wrist and yanks his hand back. But the potions had worn off on their way back, hadn’t they? When they had still been in the black armor. When it had been so obvious that they were up to something. God, they had had to sneak past so many people to get back to Tommy’s place and all it would take is one slip up. One person who was paying more attention to their surroundings, one misstep that they didn’t notice, and Ranboo would be doomed. And, yeah, it would probably just be him, huh? After all there was no shortage of tall blond guys running around but-but there’s no one like Ranboo. Firstly, because he’s probably the tallest around for miles and, secondly, because, well, have you seen any other half-enderman, half...whatever hanging around?

Yeah, neither did he.

And-and what if he just thought that no one was paying attention? In a world devastated by war as this one was, how could he even think that people weren’t constantly on their guard? Not to mention that he’s spent his whole life being watched by everyone around him, why would now be any different?

Something heavy comes to rest across his shoulders. Something rubs back and forth across the back of his hand. There’s something almost unpleasantly warm against his right thigh and, oh, he’s sitting down now?

He blinks heavy eyes, staring down at his legs, noticing the blanket that must be weighing on his shoulders out of the corner of his eyes. Spots the potion bottle resting next to his leg. Sees how his left hand is being held.

When did he get down here?

“Are you back with me, Ranboo?” the ghost’s voice breaks through the confused fog in his head. Back? Back from where? He glances around but finds that their still in the ghost’s little home. He hadn’t gone anywhere.

“I-I don’t-” He sucks in a breath, digs his nails into his palm and between the sting and the mechanical motion of the ghost’s touch he settles a little more into his skin. “Why am I on the floor?” he asks, voice cracking, sounding unreasonably upset for a mere location change.

“I put you here because you started hyperventilating and I was worried you would pass!” Once again, the ghost says it with that’s no longer surprising but does not fit with the mood in the slightest. “You know, you’re sort of the opposite of Tommy!” he says with absolutely zero context to explain what that means and he about sends Ranboo into cardiac arrest with the spike of anxiety it causes. Before he can start hyperventilating, again apparently, the ghost continues with, “Skinny yet oddly heavy!”

“O-oh.” he murmurs because he’s not sure what else to say to that very, very strange statement. He’s not sure he would agree anyway, he’d experienced most of Tommy’s weight, as well as his surprisingly sharp elbows, earlier when they’d tripped over each other. He certainly hadn’t felt any lighter than he looked. He bites his lip. “There’s, uh, just a lot of me.” he says with a motions towards his unreasonably long limbs. Sure, he’s fairly proportional but it’s still a bit much in his opinion.

The ghost laughs though the sound of it goes a little echo-y and Ranboo notices the feeling of a hand on his own becomes fainter. “I can see that!” He stares out into the room and the expression on his face becomes wistful, his voice gains a tinge of fondness. “I remember what a pain it was for Tommy and Fundy when they started really spouting up.” He gently pats Ranboo’s hand, clearly trying to empathize. “And I know I had my fair share of days hobbling around the house with swollen knees, so I can only imagine how awful it was growing into these.” he says, lifting their joined hands to emphasize his words before letting them fall back onto Ranboo’s leg.

This is...a very odd conversation their having, isn’t it? It’s nice in a way, though, mostly nonsensical, something that he doesn’t have to focus too much on to keep track of. But he also really doesn’t want to touch the topic of his childhood with a ten foot pole. Mostly due to the fact that what he remembers of it...isn’t great. “You’ve known Tommy for a while then?” he asks, gently guiding the topic away from himself.

“Oh yes!” the ghost answers immediately and looks proud of it. It makes a bit of envy bubble up in his chest because he’s sure that no one has ever looked like that when talking about him. “Since he was much smaller but still just as loud! I, well,” he deflates, “I guess Alivebur practically raised the kid.” He sounds more sad than anything now and Ranboo puzzles over this change in demeanor. 

But more than the tone change, the odd phrasing of the whole thing brings Ranboo up short. Takes him back to the night he had met the ghost, to Niki shouting about people dodging responsibility. “Alivebur?” he asks partially because he can’t help himself and partially because he wants to know if Niki’s right. If the ghost is running from the one person who could hold him accountable or if there’s something more to it.

“Yes.” the ghost snaps, surprisingly defensive, before shaking himself and taking a deep breath. “Everyone calls me Ghostbur and we’re, well, of course I’m Wilbur too, he’s got no more right to the name than me.” The words come tumbling out of him like he’s been desperate to say them to someone. That that someone happens to be Ranboo seems mostly coincidence. “So if I-if I have to be Ghostbur, then he gets to be Alivebur.” It’s interesting to see the man who seemed to have a permanent smile on his face so...vindictive? Yeah, vindictive about someone who, as Ranboo understood it, was basically himself.

“Can you not just...both be Wilbur?” He’s honestly curious. He’s dealt with his own problem with identity long enough that seeing someone else struggle with something similar was...interesting. Made him feel less weird about his own struggle.

That probably sounds awful. He can’t ever say that out loud or he’ll sound like the biggest jerk in history.

The look on Ghostbur’s face only grows more pensive, even sadder than before. Ranboo watches as Ghostbur appears to grow...more transparent. He can see clearly to the other side of the room now. “I-I...I don’t know.” he murmurs, voice wispy, thin. “I want to be myself. But,” Ghostbur releases his hand, Ranboo had forgotten they were even touching with how faint Ghostbur’s touch had become, and wraps his arms around himself, “you should have seen the way they all looked at me.” he whispers and the pure emotion in it makes Ranboo shudder. It-

Maybe it’s not the same circumstances but it hits a little close to home, nonetheless.

Ghostbur’s hands clench and unclench in the wool of his sweater, bunching the fabric. “They-they were scared of me and I-I don’t really know why.” Ghostbur clears his throat when he gets choked up but that doesn’t hide away the way his eyes have gone glossy. Ranboo wants to reach out but he keeps his hands clenched on top of his legs. He shoves down his own sense memory of eyes on him, of bubbling anxiety, of curling in on himself, doing everything and anything to keep from frightening the people around him. The details are mostly gone but he can recall the crushing loneliness with crystal clarity. “S-sometimes I can-I can remember fire and smoke and I-I could swear my ears are ringing.” He reaches a shaky hand up to press against his chest and Ranboo notices the oddly dark patch near the bottom of his ribcage, he’s got a bad feeling about why that’s there. “I hear crying sometimes and-and it gets hard to breath and it’s like I’ve got a sword through my chest all over again.”

Finally, unable to keep himself under control any longer, Ranboo reaches out a hand and hesitantly...lays it on Ghostbur’s shoulder. Has to put some effort into keeping it there when it tries to slip through the man’s less corporeal form. Ghostbur blinks and looks up at him, surprised, and Ranboo bites his lip, sure he’s managed to cross a line just like he thought he would because he doesn’t have enough experience interacting with other people to know how to without trodding all over social conventions-

“Oh.” Ghostbur gives a water-y laugh and wipes at his eyes, he clearly tries for a smile but it comes out a shaky grimace. “I’m sorry, you’re here trying to calm down away from your own problems and I’m crying on you now.” He shifts, like he’s considering getting up and Ranboo tries to grab him.

And while he’s not successful, it catches Ghostbur’s attention anyway, enough to get him to stop moving.

“I-” He hesitates. He doesn’t want to make this about himself but, well, he can relate. He knows how valuable it is to not feel alone. “I know how tricky memory can be. I…” He sighs and pulls his knees up to his chest, wraps his arms around them. “I don’t remember most of my childhood or-or much of anything, especially not the good stuff.” he mutters, totally not bitter at all about the trend towards the negative in what he does remember. “So I don’t-I don’t know if I got really bad growing pains. Sometimes, it feels like I’ve just been,” he motions to the whole of him, bunched up as it is, “this, my whole life.” He scratches his nails across the grain of his pant fabric and chews at his lips. He sneaks a glance at Ghostbur’s face but he can’t quite decipher the expression on his face. But the ghost’s face tipped towards him, clearly paying attention, is enough for him to carry on. “But then I’ll be doing whatever and I’ll get the strangest sense of-of deja vu. Like I’m so sure I’ve already lived through it but at, like, the wrong angle? I walked into the house the other day and it was warm and Niki was singing and I could smell bread baking and I ended up cracking my head against the top of the doorframe into the kitchen because I just didn’t think I needed to duck to avoid it?” He’s rambling. He knows he’s rambling and probably not making any sense but-but it feels great even just to say it all out loud.

He tends to keep the worst of what he feels about his situation, ostracization, his memory problems from Niki because he knows that it only serves to make her feel guilty. And he just can’t have that after she gave up so much to try and create a safe place for them to live. Where he wouldn’t feel out of place anymore. He’s too grateful for that to burden her with his ever mounting issues.

Ghostbur sniffs and runs a hand under his nose. Which, gross, but Ranboo supposes that it isn’t like ghosts have germs? He’s on thin ice nonetheless. “I f-feel like I should know L’Manberg like the back of my hand.” He rubs the tips of his fingers with his thumbs. “I can remember the calluses I used to have from building the place, after all, I know what this land looked like before it had buildings. When it was just a little forgotten island on the edge of the SMP. But-” He sucks in a breath, two, three, and calms his newest wave of emotion enough to continue. “But-but now it’s like the image of my L’Manberg and Tubbo’s L’Manberg don’t-don’t mesh? I get turned around thinking a path should lead somewhere it doesn’t, I avoid walls where there aren’t any.” Ghostbur laughs and presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. It’s not a nice laugh. “Don’t even get me started on how many times I’ve gone to the Camarvan only to realize that I’m just floating over a giant hole!” He sniffs again and Ranboo wonders if it would be polite to offer to find a tissue. Can ghosts use tissues? Would that be insensitive? He decides to keep his mouth firmly shut on the matter. “And that’s all when I remember anything at all.” he spits, crossing his arms over his chest.

Ranboo hums in sympathetic understanding. “Bad days.” he nods.

“I feel like a fool knowing that sometimes I wonder around not knowing anything about everything.” Ghostbur mutters, shifting to mimic Ranboo’s position.

There’s a long silence. Neither of them say a word. Ranboo stares down at the floor in front of him. Traces the pattern on the blankets and pillows. “What a pair we make, huh?” he tries to joke, forcing a smile and glancing over at Ghostbur. It falls flat. Not surprising.

“You know,” Ghostbur starts after several more long moments of silence and Ranboo can already tell by his tone that he’s not going to like this, “Tommy never should have dragged you into his drama.” And he says it so matter-of-factly that Ranboo wants to believe him so bad but…

He shakes his head. It was just a bonding activity. A terrible one, but one Tommy had clearly been excited about. And they’d helped out in the community gardens first, hadn’t they? Had they? Yeah, he’s pretty sure they did. And that good helped to balance out some of the griefing.

Right?

...right.

“It’s not...that big of a deal.” he says, very uncertain. Considering Ghostbur had already bore witness to Ranboo’s meltdowns, it’s probably not even close to a convincing lie. “I mean, I could have said no I just...didn’t.” God, he’s so bad at this.

He keeps his gaze on the floor, begins to pick at a loose thread on the edge of one of the blankets, and can feel Ghostbur’s eyes on the side of his head. A hand comes to rest, featherlight, on his shoulder and Ranboo sighs but looks up but stops with his eyes somewhere around Ghostbur’s cheekbones. “Ranboo…” Ghostbur sighs. “I-I was there for most of what happened this morning. I keep a...close eye on Tommy when I remember to.” Ranboo swallows and tries to keep his heart from thundering out of his chest when Ghostbur’s lips twitch down into a frown. No, no. A ghost following them and watching without their knowledge did not validate his every fear and worry. That-that was a variable that no one could account for. And it’s not like the realm is full of ghosts or anything. He reminds himself of Ghostbur’s fondness of Tommy, the pride in his voice when talking about him. He may be mad or, ugh, disappointed, but he likely wouldn’t do anything if it put Tommy at risk too. 

Probably. 

“And even besides the fact that I saw how easily he bowled right over you-” Ranboo winces at that. Yeah, fair though, he’s not particularly great at saying no, try as he might. “-I know firsthand how much of an unstoppable force Tommy can be. It takes more than your average person to stand their ground against him.” He pats Ranboo on the shoulder. “No one would blame you for getting caught up with him.” Ghostbur’s lips twist into a grimace and Ranboo’s fears skyrocket all over again when Ghostbur corrects, “Well, no one in L’Manberg.”

“Oh.” he murmurs and presses the back of his hand against his mouth, fights back the sudden wave of nausea. Because it isn’t like the people of L’Manberg were the ones he was worried about upsetting to begin with. “O-oh god.”

Ghostbur shifts until his arm joins the blanket in laying across Ranboo’s shoulders. Ranboo leans into him without thinking too much about it. Though he catches himself from leaning too much on him with his wavering opacity. “I won’t lie to you,” Ghostbur says softly, “someone will notice what you’ve done, the news will get back to George and George will, undoubtedly, go running back to Dream.” Ranboo’s gripping his pant legs so hard he’s surprised he hasn’t ripped them. “You and Tommy are going to be in trouble, but you didn’t do too much harm, so it probably won’t be anymore than a slap on the wrist for you and some sort of reparations from Tommy, maybe community service, because he’s a repeat offender.” he jokes, shaking Ranboo lightly.

Ranboo snorts a laugh and Ghostbur grins like he’s won a trophy. “There we go!” Ghostbur cheers, throwing his free arm up which serves to make Ranboo crack a real smile and shake his head.

It-it’s nice. Feeling like he’s not alone in the world.

Ranboo lingers for a long time even after that, eventually relaxing into the blankets that chase away the chill of the stone room. Ghostbur drifts away when he becomes so translucent he’s barely even a head and torso. That far away, empty smile slowly takes over his expression again as whatever surge of emotion that had broken through it fades away. But that’s fine because Ranboo knows what’s buried deep down in there now and he’s sure he could pull it back out again if he needed to.

With the sound of Ghostbur tinkering away in the background, mostly the chopping or ingredients, the clinking of glass, and the occasional scratch of a pencil, Ranboo even takes some time to skim through a few of the books left laying around. Most of those he flips through are like diaries or-or more like biographies? Each one is written in a different style, signed by a different author, but they all surround the same topics.

L’Manberg. The Revolution.

There’s some that even touch on something called Pogtopia though Ranboo’s not familiar with that name.

Each one proves just as interesting as the last and Ranboo can’t stay focused on any one of them for long before he wonders how the next one might differ.

The one that finally manages to catch and hold his attention the most is the most unassuming one, spiral bound as opposed to the book binding of the others. Upon opening, however, he discovers it to be a sketchbook. Unsigned. And it’s like he’s found a little window into the past. The whole thing is almost full of drawing and pictures, as if someone had made it their life’s mission to capture every moment they were living through. It reminds Ranboo of his memory books, different format, same motivation. To remember. There’s a lot of drawings, each clearly crafted with the same care for details.

Most are black and white with splashes of color here and there. There’s one of a group of people circled around a book, orange highlights thanks to the brewing stands in the background. Another of a crowd of silhouettes surrounding a woman, Ranboo’s sure that that’s Niki, as she raises L’Manberg’s first flag, the blue, red, and yellow stark in the scene. There’s only one image drawn in full color and its the one he lingers on the longest.

A group of seven people in mostly matching uniforms stand and they all look so similar yet so-so foreign from the images Ranboo has in his mind of them. Wilbur Soot stands front and center, one arm wrapped around Fundy’s shoulders and his hand buried in Tommy’s hair. Tommy ducking down and swatting at him, clearly in the middle of shouting and Tubbo grinning as he tries to hold Tommy back. Niki has one hand wrapped around Fundy’s middle and her other holding onto the back of Jack Manifold’s coat, keeping the man from wandering out of line. She’s the only one smiling directly at whoever is drawing.

They all look so relaxed-

-he jumps when the book is eased out of his hands and closed, placed on top of another stack of books. He glances up towards Ghostbur. “It’s getting late now, Ranboo!” he says and Ranboo wonders how he knows when he hasn’t seen any clocks around. “You should head home before you make Niki worry again!”

Ranboo lets out a shuddering breath but nods, maybe a little too fast. Right. As much as he wants to he can’t stay holed up down here forever. “Okay.” He pushes himself to his feet and brushes himself off, takes another breath. “Alright. Alright!” He pumps himself up. It’s sort of sad, he knows it is.

Ghostbur sounds amused when he asks, “Do you want me to walk back with you?”

Ranboo considers the offer. He’s tempted but he thinks he’s got his head on straight enough to make it back on his own. And some time to himself while he isn’t busy freaking out would be nice, he thinks. He shakes his head. “I think I-I’ll be fine.” he murmurs.

“Suit yourself!” Ghostbur chirps and turns back to the little book he’s been scribbling in. “Feel free to come back whenever! I’m sure I can find some other interesting books for you to read.”

“Thank you.” he says and he means it for so much more than just the invitation back.

Ghostbur starts humming instead of giving an answer and his soft melodies follow Ranboo out the door and back into the waterways where he hugs the wall all the way back to the ladder. It’s pretty easy to retrace his steps back up and out even if he does have to pause for an unreasonable amount of time to build up the courage to wiggle his way back through the boxes.

It’s dark out when he finally leaves the building the crane is attached to. Not terribly late, but the sun has definitely set and he thinks he might have already missed his window if he wanted to avoid worrying Niki. It’s not like he’s ever been out this late before under normal circumstances. He grimaces and just figures he’ll hurry back and be prepared to explain himself and offer an apology. He can just say he got caught up talking and because they were underground he hadn’t realized how much time had actually passed, which was technically true.

Even though he’s in a better place now than before, Ranboo’s still glad that there aren’t that many people out and about as he makes his trek home. He keeps his head down and travels quickly and arrives back at his and Niki’s house in good time.

The lights in the house are still on, which isn’t surprising, and Ranboo shakes himself and takes a few deep breaths, shoving all of his emotions from the day down and pulling himself together.

He pushes the door open and can only hope that he doesn’t look nearly as suspicious as he feels-

-and comes face to face with Niki and Puffy. Niki’s hands are on her hips and the frown on Puffy’s face makes Ranboo want to shrivel up and die.

“Ranboo,” Niki says, voice stern and Ranboo can feel his face shifting into a grimace, “what did you do?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! There's a lot of content here and a lot of me making things up and speculating so if anything needs clarifying feel free to ask me! If you can't tell I both really love worldbuilding and exploring the world through Ranboo who has literally no idea about anything besides what he's been told in the past


End file.
